Sonos updates network music player code

Sonos has updated the system software underpinning its Digital Music System. Following a similar move by rival network music player maker Slim Devices earlier this year, Sonos' own system will now support RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service.

Echoing Apple's iTunes 7 announcement earlier this week, the Sonos software update also brings gapless MP3 and Ogg playback, though the former is limited to music files encoded using Lame. Speaking of Apple, Sonos System Software 2.0 supports iTunes' Compilation tag and adds support for the Album Artist ID3 tag.

Ironically, the latter's causing some grief to iTunes 7 users, since it uses the tag to separate out tracks from different artists on the same album. The solution: remove the Various Artists string from the Album Artists field, and multi-artist albums are once more whole. Or you can check the aforementioned Compilations tag.

But back to Sonos. The company said the update adds an alarm clock feature to each Zone Player on the network. The software incorporates French, Italian and Spanish language options. The Controller's scrollwheel has been improved to cope better with very long track lists, and users' music libraries can now be indexed automatically according to a user-defined schedule.